We are defining processes for company andwe need to establish a fluent process for QA as well. we need to define QA involvement from start to end in a life time of a project. These include answering few questions:

What are industry standards?

What is the role of QA at every stage of a project (from requirement gathering to delivery/deployment)?

What is the input required from QA at every stage?

What is the out required by QA for testing at intermediate stages till the end?

What are those intermediate stages (depending upon the nature of a project)?

What documents should be developed by the team (software engineers/ managers) to be used by QA?

Format of those documents?

Reporting format?

Method to transfer subjected project from developers to QA for testing and vise versa?

Final approval method from QA?

These are just few points to start with for the upcoming projects.

As for the immediate action point when our projects are in the middle or close to completion, please define what could be a smooth process of handing over a project to QA (alongwith required docs), expected response with expected time, developers first response to an error report and how we can reduce cross communication or back n forth movement of project.